Hard to imagine your outrage is real. Go to the closest stop sign and watch who comes to a complete stop. Is it anyone?
Can't have it both ways. The statistical evidence is clear: the average US driver is tremendously unsafe, untrained, unobservant and unskilled despite their country being built around driving everywhere. Their remonstrations on all the rule breaking they can perform safely stems purely from ignorance of their own inabilities.
The point is also much more about creating a habit in which this kind of behaviour is just done, regardless of the state of the traffic on the road. The law says you must stop for a stop sign, stop signs are placed in places in which sudden traffic participants could enter your field of vision at a time in which it is too late to react properly.
Also, people get fined for ignoring stop signs, even if no one is present. Driving education in the netherlands is quite strict and so are punishments for drivers. For instance, the driver of a car is always at fault for an accident with a "weak" traffic participant (foot/bike traffic), even if technically they werent at fault. (there is process to fight this in court if you assume ill intent/fraud is at play, although it is rarely used).
the reasoning being that the driver of a car has had a drivers education and can thus act responsible while driving a hunk of metal down the road at lethal speeds.
This is also normal in the US, despite what a few commenters on HN may have you believe. Hell, if anything, regular people out and about at 4am are better about following the basic laws, because you stand out a lot more when you flout them, and in the wee hours of the night the proportion of drunk drivers is far higher and so cops are looking for it.
i don’t mean to overgeneralize. i expect there is at least some small correlation between density and how much you break at a four-way stop, and i’m curious what the other correlates are and how dominant full-stops are.
And a cop will fine you if she sees you do it.
I agree with the concept, because it makes for clear rules. Rules, which shouldn't be up for interpretation by any old driver.
You sound like the kind of person to not signal when you change lanes because you think there's plenty of room.
Still we often get this wrong and somebody gets hurt.
A computer is not cursed with our human impatience so why program it in? But more importantly the computer has none of the general intelligence and situational awareness that a dim human has, and they won’t for a long time.
The laws say to stop, LEO say to stop, etc. I can't think of a defence to not stop beyond "No one else does it."
In fact, the most annoying thing is that they will stop for too long despite the lack of cross-traffic or pedestrians traversing the intersection (in any direction).